Photonic integrated circuits and systems, commonly referred as “integrated photonics”, involve fabricating both optical devices and electrical devices on a same substrate, usually a semiconductor substrate. Using similar semiconductor fabrication techniques employed in manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs), one is able to integrate, on a same semiconductor substrate, miniaturized optical components together with electrical components to perform signal processing or other circuit functions in both optical and electrical domains. For example, a coherent receiver commonly used for telecommunication may be realized by miniaturized optical components (such as waveguides, photodiodes, optical couplers, polarizers, beam splitters, optical mixers, and the like) integrated with miniaturized electrical components (such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, electrodes, and the like). Due to the miniaturized physical nature of the optical and electrical components, PICs and systems are vulnerable to static electric shocks in the environment just like electronic integrated circuits does. That is, an ESD incident happening on a PIC may easily “burn the chip”, or destroy the PIC physically due to a sudden high current flowing through the PIC. Therefore, it is essential to provide ESD protection mechanisms to protect a PIC in an event of an ESD incident.